


Playing Behind Your Wicked Smile

by Star_Noble



Series: Short Stories [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Off Screen Death, Vague descriptions of child death, Vague descriptions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Noble/pseuds/Star_Noble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t know it yet but you life is already chosen for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Behind Your Wicked Smile

You are born a squalling mass of limbs and newborn cries -muted and shattered from glass. On your collarbone is an elegant and concise name, already stark black on the healthy flush of your skin.

The doctor congratulates your ecstatic parents, giving them praising words he’s said a thousand times and will say a thousand times more. The nurse gives her well wishes, a fake smile on her lips and curses in her heart. You parents don’t see, cooing their delight over it and you.

You don’t know it yet but you life is already chosen for you.

 

 

 

The media, your parents, even the teachers in the school that bores you tell you that you don’t need to do anything but wait. Your ‘One’ will find you, somehow, and that will be that. They want you to believe that everyone meets their ‘One’. You don’t correct them.

It seems a silly thing to do in the long run. Your parents did not end up with their ‘One’. Your mother’s name is burnt out, a black mark on her perfectly pale arm. Father’s is not so noticeable, a barely seen scrawl around his shoulders. It’s there though, perfectly legible.

You remember your set of younger siblings, a boy and a girl, whose names were scrawled over each other. Society was predictably horrified and you remember hating -your first, not not your last time- the way your parents walked on eggshells around them. How people would mutter.

You remember sneaking into your mother’s study, slipping books under the skirts your father insisted on buying and reading them in the silence of your bedroom. Under the bed or in the closet. You didn’t read them for the plots, flimsy little excuses for things best left unsaid. But the way the author would explain it’s like breathing for the first time or finally being able to see, the emotions that came with meeting your ‘One’.

There was one book that spoke of it in a more clinical manner. You remember how the girl chose to forsake her ‘One’ to be with the man she fit with more. You remember hoarding that book until her mother found in and threw it away in a fit of rage.

They want so badly for something your never sure you want yourself. They never ask.

 

 

 

You came to hate funerals at a much younger age than most even know that they exist. Your mother is crying beside you, tears rolling from her stone faced eyes. Your father is pinching his lips and fingers curled into hard steel at his side.

There are others, in the crowds and sobbing and making stupid, inane comments you don’t hear because you can’t. You can’t hear past the rush of blood in your ears and the pounding of your heart and how everything is wrong, so wrong and why won’t they come back, right now, because you can’t do this alone. Can’t accept this.

The priest speaks, a man who you’ve never met but your parents seem to know and everyone is following along but it’s gibberish to you, everything hurts.

Shut Up, you want to scream. It’s your fault they died! Your shame in them, don’t pretend you’re not pleased. You think it in your heart, your head and your soul but in the end you say nothing.

You listen to dull murmurs and some part of you shattering.

 

 

 

You move from home as soon as you can, after your mother is four months in the ground and your father doesn’t even see the walls in front of him. Good, you think bitterly as you pack, hoping he feels some of the pain you’ve felt for so long it’s the only normal you’ve known. But then you’re guilty, because he’s your father and shouldn’t every girl love their father?

What love you have for him is mixed in the hate and the self loathing and so you leave.

You wonder, as you sit on a plane for the first time, watching the clouds go by. You wonder if it will hurt as much to lose your ‘One’. Their loss broke so much of you and your mother is a dark, throbbing ache in your heart. Your father acts as if his reason for living is gone, even though you're still here. So you wonder.

That thought scares you.

So you ignore it, going to your new tiny apartment and your new stupid, low level job and you bury yourself in them because you can’t even think about that. But some nights, when it’s too quiet and you finished all you can do and you're just laying in bed wishing for sleep, you wonder if it’s better to never meet them.

 

 

 

 

Some days your brain won’t shut up and you hate everything, anything and the name taunts you from your bone. Those days you carve you regret into it, tears and blood and despair running off your flesh.

You wear turtlenecks after it becomes obvious what you’ve been doing, long coats that cover raw fingertips. You avoid intimacy after that, reluctant to let anyone close enough. What if they want to help? What if you start forgetting them? You swore you wouldn’t and that thought scares you enough to avoid people for days whenever it comes up.

You think about changing your names sometimes, so that at a glance you won’t be recognized but it won’t help much in the face of touch and your name is what led you to meet them so you don’t.

Turtlenecks and blood and working from home are all you have.

That and regret.

Some days you forget you have a name, the scars mangle it some and make it hard to read, some days you can pretend they died and you don’t have to worry. Some days are better.

 

 

 

 

You meet a man, off traveling for your work, whose name is broken, mangled, unrecognizable and so lovely the first time you see it you almost burst into tears -embarrassing really.

He’s charming and sweet and you can ignore the name beating into you bone. What’s the use of a name? He’s foreign and shows you things you haven’t been able to get to and didn’t remember wanting to see but love as soon as you do. Months later and a shared apartment and you realize you fell in love. You hope they would approve.

He’s perfect to you and sometimes you have to hide, to remember what your life is -was like- and he looks so sad, so pained when you do that you start to hide it. Waiting till your work takes you away and the marks in your skin fade.

You can tell he still hates it, and it’s the start of your first huge fight. He’s angry and you’re hurting and confused and then he gets down on knee and pulls out a box and everything goes hazy.

You agree and he asks you to get help because he’s worried you won’t be here if you don’t and some part of you rejoices in that but you agree because you love him and it would be cruel to be your mother.

His friends become your friends because you never tried to make your own and they help with the wedding plans. His parents are years past, dying together, and you haven’t talked to your father since you left -even with the stilted birthday cards.

 

 

 

It feels perfect.

As the date gets closer you start slipping away more, instead of driving your nails against the name again you choose instead to talk to a therapist. She’s vague and annoying but sometimes being rude at her and saying what you want is almost as good and getting it so you survive and the smile when you come home makes it worth it.

He wants you to meet his best friend -best man soon- and you agree because the man’s been elusive and you’ve never met before.

That intended meeting makes you jittery, and the day before you just curl up in your therapist’s office, sitting in a corner trying to remember how to breath. She says nothing and that helps more than you could have known.

The day of you go to the local park, summer in full swing and wait. Another man comes up, bored and handsome but something sparks off in you and your mind rebels about going over to meet him. Ignoring that bit you stand anyway, aiming for a smile that might not have worked as well as you hoped.

The best friend move to shake your hand and you move with it. When the shock of heat and rush of air out of your lungs hits you accept it, smiling through the feeling. The books had it wrong, the rush is so much more intense and it makes you want to throw up.

Your fiance catches your elbow, asking if something is wrong and the best friend moves to speak, to say yes or ignore it you don’t know. You head him off, assuring your fiance everything is fine and mentally shutting down what happened.

Soul mates are for fairy tales and nothing more.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The sibling soulmates mentioned in this story are strictly platonic but people have a way of blowing things out of proportion.
> 
>  
> 
> [art](http://www.polyvore.com/playing_behind_your_wicked_smile/set?id=191948257)


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